Rabbit Trails

This past week we took a break from homeschooling. I homeschool all year round, for a few reasons. I like the continuity - long breaks in the summer mean we have to review for the first month back or so and that's just a waste of time. It also allows us to take more frequent breaks throughout the year. A couple of us are sick - no big deal, let's break out some movies. At this point we homeschool for a couple hours in the morning. There's no stress over making sure we hit a certain number of days or making time for field trips and playdates. And lots and lots of outdoor play makes for happy kids.

                                               

                   
Sometimes we're running full tilt, blazing down this path of learning. Latin, history, science, math - we're right on target. Other times we take rabbit trails and see where they go. I love the full tilt, feel like we're productive, checking things off a list time. And I love the rabbit trails. No schedule, no plan. Children are innately curious. Sometimes it sticks with us as adults - the wonderers of society, the group that asks "what if?" Sometimes it dies out as we age or gets squashed when no one has time to figure out the answers. I want to have time to answer these questions together, to not rush around trying to become so educated that we miss learning all these beautiful things.

This past week the kids spent a lot of time outside, happily climbing trees and playing cops and digging. We went to Legoland for a day as a family and went about our usual routine of homeschool PE at the Y and dance lessons. Jack took a day and figured out which direction the world turns based on the sun's position. Kate spent hours and hours thumbing through my books, deciphering words. For no other reason than that they wanted to. Sometimes the rabbit trails are richer than the actual path.

A little bit of our jaunt down the rabbit trails:

CERN Now Certain It Has Discovered the Higgs Boson - Forbes

    We're almost positive we have. Definitely an absolute just about found it.

How Home Schooling Threatens Monopoly Education - USA today

     Not sure the numbers are big enough to threaten. But it should make the powers that be take notice. The money should follow the kid, not the other way around. As always, almost everything in life comes down to money, regardless of our ideals.

How "Fast" is the Speed of Light? - NASA

     Spinning off a discussion on how fast we would get to Legoland going at the speed of light. Check out the  wealth of stuff on the left side of the page.

Phil Robertson - Deciding to Follow Jesus

      One of the guys from Duck Dynasty. Simple, amazing testimony.

    Reading this aloud to the kids. One of my favorite childhood memories is of my older sister reading this
to me and my younger sister in the evenings. The Grand High Witch has a sort of Transylvanian accent and my sister doing the voice was the best part. My kids today get a kick out of it too and walk around saying "You may rrrremove your vigs."

Lots of morning spent giggling on the couch, all four of us snuggled under a blanket, perfecting our accents.

We run the path, we meander the trails and oh what lovely things we find all along the way.





               

Picture Books We Love

Some recent books we've enjoyed:

This book is pretty awesome. Plus, it written by a Frenchman, so it makes me feel all worldly and exotic. I bought it for Noah for his birthday, but the older kids hog it quite a bit. Very original, simple and fun. When Noah gets it, he opens it to the front cover (it has a black background with primary colored dots all over it) and he looks at it and says "Oh!" in a high-pitched baby voice. Sometimes I plant the book in his way so he'll see it and open it.

Few children's books make me laugh out loud (aloud?) but this one does. The illustrations are soft and clean, the story is funny. Katie got this from her Grandma and asked to read it all the time with variations to the title - "Can we read 'Where is my Hat?" or "The Hat" or "Who Has My Hat?"

I got this book from my sister-in-law for my birthday. It does have the word 'jackass' in the end, because the other character is a donkey. So if I read it to the kids (which they ask for often), I just say the word donkey. Words like that can easily be explained by "It means this but it's become a not-so-nice word in our society so we just don't say it." The kids readily accept it when they overhear a word in the grocery store or we read books like Tom Sawyer or something. This is a really cute book and I love the premise of it.



That's all the new books I can think of that we've read recently. Kate's not feeling well this morning so I have movies and books planned instead of school. She lounged around all morning then threw up and promptly feel asleep on the couch. I tend to dismiss their claims of sickness, especially when it coincides with being asked to empty the dishwasher. Throwing up validates it. When I was a kid, my mom told us we had to go to school unless we were throwing up. If we did throw up, she'd say "Don't you feel better now? Get to school."

Movies and books and Pooh Bear snuggled on the couch. That's our Tuesday.

Tut-tut, it looks like rain

When Kate was a newborn, she was given the gift of a stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh by our dear friend Margaret (and Katie's namesake). It's a classic Pooh, with light colored fur and a soft pink tee. He is beloved and worn, now with rubbed dirty fur (despite weekly washing) and torn tee. He has purple nail polish on his paws from an impromptu day of beauty. He is Kate's constant friend and monster repellent.

It's mid morning on Monday. Noah is asleep, most likely dreaming of goldfish and milk. Jack slept over at my mom's house and is probably eating his weight in chocolate cereal right now. I told Katie to get Winnie the Pooh and we snuggled up on the chair and read. She is learning to read and sounded out some words and asked me to use my finger as I read so she could follow. We read and let the words wash around us, this magical world of a bear and his boy.

My little girl is getting older, as little girls are wont to do. We let her get her ears pierced last week after years of her asking and cajoling. She chose sparkly pink butterflies and is very serious about turning them and cleaning them. When we go to the store she is usually in a tutu and carrying a purse, her strides confident and happy because she feels cute. I see glimpses of her as a teen sometimes as her lovely face thins and changes with age. She will be a wonderful person, I know.

This morning, though, she is little. Her body melts into mine as we imagine Pooh on his adventures. We laugh at his ill-fated rain cloud escapade - will he ever outsmart the bees?

                Hand in hand we come
                  Christopher Robin and I
                To lay this book in your lap.
                       Say you're surprised?
                       Say you like it?
                       Say it's just what you wanted?
                              Because it's yours-
                              Because we love you.


                                              -from The World of Pooh, A.A. Milne

Mysterious Benedict Society

The kids and I are really enjoying our current read aloud - The Mysterious Benedict Society. I read it years ago but Jack and Kate are finally at ages that they can appreciate this book. It's actually part of a trilogy and I plan on getting the boxed set at some point to finish it.

The basic premise is that Mr. Benedict has formed a team of gifted and skilled children to help him combat a nefarious global plan. To join the team, the children must pass a series of tests. The reader gets to solve the puzzles along with the characters. After joining the team, the children, lead by the aptly named Mr. Benedict and his quirky adult sidekicks, are sent on the dangerous mission. It's your basic good vs evil, save the world book. Except with fantastically gifted kids.

Fun, right?

What I love about this book, besides the thinkiness, is the characters. There are so many wonderful kids books that feature characters that are kind and brave and full of ingenuity. These are the books I want to read - to make my kids think, to savor good writing line by line.  My hope for my own children is that they are thoughtful in their actions, especially to others, and they have a firm sense of who they are in this great big world.